How unfortunate that some people can intentionally harm themselves just to terminate an unwanted pregnancy. To many, conceiving a child is so difficult. Some go to the extent of spending so much money just to have an artificial insemination or in vitro fertilization. Others even go to the point of desperation by doing rituals and offer sacrifices.

This 22 year old patient of mine doesn’t seem to understand how lucky she is. She was admitted at my unit with a diagnosis of ” intentional organophosphate poisoning. Pregnancy, uterine, 28wks age of gestation, gravida 1, para 0″. Yes, she was 7 months pregnant and she literally ingested a pesticide causing her to be rushed to the hospital and get admitted in an ICU for close monitoring of not just herself but the baby.

She was screaming in pain due to contractions, she kept on repeating, “please remove the baby, the doctors told me she isn’t likely to survive anyway”, she was crying and shouting.

Although what she did was horrible, I could not bring myself to judge her. As a mother of two kids, I cannot imagine myself doing the same thing, but our circumstances are different, so as the support we get from our family. So, instead of feeling mad at what she did, I sort of felt pity. She must have been in an extremely unbearable situation to have resorted to such thing which could endanger both her life and her baby.

To all our relief, she was slowly recovering, its her 7th day of confinement and the baby is fine as the ultrasound showed. I believe, the baby has a good destiny to fulfill. I just hope that her mother would grow mature to help her baby be the person that God wants her to become.